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Date(s)： 2023/11/09
Time： 15:00~17:00
Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall
Speaker：Prof. François Gipouloux (法國國家科學研究院榮休名譽研究員)
Organizer： Western Learning and China Research Group、Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient（EFEO）
Abstract: From the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century, the East Asian seaboard seems to have been a succession of overlapping and ever changing basins: Sea of Okhostk, Sea of Japan, Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, South China Sea. This system extends to the West towards the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca and to the East towards the Java Sea, the Sulu Sea, the Celebes Sea, the Ambon Sea, the Coral Sea, and the Tasman Sea. This maritime corridor is structured in three parts: the coastal zones of south east China, an island chain, and finally metropolises that control trade from a distance. What we detect then is a land-sea continuum in which ports are not only the place of gathering freight caught in a large hinterland, but also and foremost, the starting point for a dense web of commercial flows. This has long historical antecedents. During the 16th century, Europeans were discovering in Asia a well structured commercial area, organised around arab, indian, chinese, and japanese merchant networks. While globalisation accelerated the erosion of sovereignties, the rise of cities with international ambitions, and their emergence as elements of a global governance system, encouraged the reevaluation of relationships between cities and states. Such a new dynamics of international economics shapes a landscape where the control on flows (merchandise flows, financial flows, etc.) accounts more than the control of territories.